Rank-sounding names?

[David Borowitz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bowes

Maybe some of that article is suspect, but the link to IMDB at least
suggests that "Major" was not his given name. I've found that if someone in
showbusiness has a neat-sounding name, it's generally because he chose it
for himself.

On 4/8/07, sagehen <sagehen at westelcom.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Rank-sounding names?
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> There was a long-running radio show that was very popular back in the '30s
> & '40s called, I think, "The Major Bowes  Amateur Hour." I suppose that
> was
> Bowes' given name. I never got to hear more than the tiniest snippets of
> it
> since it was much disparaged by my parents (don't know why; what did they
> know about it, since we never had it on?!)  I imagine it was a sort of
> forebear of the Ed Sullivan show (another bit of our culture I never got
> acquainted with, since we didn't have tv until the late '80s), which in
> its
> turn has -- again I suppose -- morphed into the American (&Canadian) Idol
> (which, again,  I don't know much about, having never seen more than the
> occasional trailer).
> AM
>
> ~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>
>
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Borowitz

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